Professor David Knights from Oxford Brookes Business School has been elected Fellow of the British Academy, in recognition of his contribution to the humanities and social sciences.
Professor Knights researches management education, organisation and leadership, gender and diversity, the body and ethics, identity and power, technology, and finance. His most recent research has focussed on the veterinary profession (with Dr. Caroline Clarke, The Open University) and on a New York Co-operative in collaboration with Dr Guy Huber at Oxford Brookes.
Professor Knights is Emeritus Professor at Lancaster University Management School and has previously been honoured by receiving the first International Critical Management Studies Board Rosa Luxemburg Award for outstanding contribution to critical studies of organization, and the European Group for Organization Studies Honorary Membership for his contribution to the field.
Professor Knights said: “It is a great honour to be elected to the British Academy and I trust that I can contribute further to its tradition of promoting and supporting research and scholarship of the highest standard within the social sciences, humanities and the arts.”
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship of over 1400 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.
Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funding body for research, nationally and internationally, and a forum for debate and engagement.
This year a total of 84 Fellows – 52 UK Fellows, 29 Corresponding Fellows and 3 Honorary Fellows – have been elected to the Fellowship.
Welcoming the Fellows, the new President of the British Academy, Professor Julia Black, said: “As the new President of the British Academy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this new cohort of Fellows, who are as impressive as ever and remind us of the rich and diverse scholarship and research undertaken within the SHAPE disciplines – the social sciences, humanities and the arts. I am very much looking forward to working with them on our shared interests.
“The need for SHAPE subjects has never been greater. As Britain recovers from the pandemic and seeks to build back better, the insights from our diverse disciplines will be vital to ensure the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the UK and will continue to provide the cultural and societal enrichment that has sustained us over the last eighteen months. Our new Fellows embody the value of their subjects and I congratulate them warmly for their achievement.”